Opinion: Will D&D ever acheive caster vs martial balance?

[Ignimortis]

A single casting of Forcecage or hovering out of reach with arrows can neutralize lots of things, like an Iron Golem (CR 16). Even a Mummy Lord can't get out of one. That's not how CR is calculated in this game.

And that is a large issue with how 5e works, yes. It contributes a lot to the martial-caster imbalance (as a principle, not Forcecage in general). Conan cannot work in D&D if the sorcerers he faces work by D&D mechanics and are double-digit level spellcasters (or an NPC approximation thereof).

Which brings us back to the point I stated earlier in the thread (granted, it was not @you): we either need to bring the casters down to earth so that having a lot of HP and damage means something beyond "ok I just outmaneuver it completely for a spellslot that's been cheap five levels ago", or bring martials and monsters back up, so that they actually have ways to play around the spellcasters' having such tools.

My personal favourite is meeting in the middle, letting everyone be fantastical in spades, and having monsters with cool abilities you can shut down or play around by using your own cool abilities as any class.

[Dr.Samurai]

Re: Shuma-Gorath

It sounds like Conan had to resist some mental manipulation, read from the books, then throw the books into the storm so Crom would have the power to rebind Shuma-Gorath.

Seems like a puzzle or skill encounter, and it's somehow discounted from Conan's feats, despite the fact that Shuma-Gorath is a god level entity.

Ultimately it doesn't matter, because it doesn't have to have happened in media for D&D to make it possible. But Conan put away an arch-demon god of war and darkness so... what's the problem?

[PhoenixPhyre]

And that is a large issue with how 5e works, yes. It contributes a lot to the martial-caster imbalance (as a principle, not Forcecage in general). Conan cannot work in D&D if the sorcerers he faces work by D&D mechanics and are double-digit level spellcasters (or an NPC approximation thereof).

Which brings us back to the point I stated earlier in the thread (granted, it was not @you): we either need to bring the casters down to earth so that having a lot of HP and damage means something beyond "ok I just outmaneuver it completely for a spellslot that's been cheap five levels ago", or bring martials and monsters back up, so that they actually have ways to play around the spellcasters' having such tools.

My personal favourite is meeting in the middle, letting everyone be fantastical in spades, and having monsters with cool abilities you can shut down or play around by using your own cool abilities as any class.

I generally agree with "meet in the middle." That will require tuning down casters as well as accepting slightly wider "what can non-casters do" options.

One, utterly quixotic and probably unworkable idea I had was to imagine a world where magic only very rarely replaced things normal(ish) people could do and mostly augmented those abilities. Here I'm mostly talking about utility magic--raw bursts of fire are one thing. Trivially teleporting, etc is a different thing. Or, to take the bugbears--spiderclimb and knock, as well as the various charm abilities.

What if charm person just gave you proficiency in charisma checks, and if you already had proficiency, gave you expertise instead. That is, it makes you really charming, but doesn't actually remove the need for a check. What if knock gave you proficiency (or expertise if you had it) in thieves tools instead of just opening the lock? If spiderclimb gave you advantage on checks made to climb instead of just saying "ok, you can climb anywhere and anything". What if planeshift was instead find planar portal, and allowed anyone to find the nearest planar portal attuned to <plane>, and you gave rangers a native ability to do that? What if fly was really just jump real high and land safely? or walk on clouds (and anyone could do that with a sufficient check already)?

That, and make a lot of the non-immediate utility magic (the things you're not casting because you need the result right now) available to everyone via something like (but implemented better) 4e's rituals. So teleport or sending or even raise dead isn't something you need to be a caster for--it's something that anyone of the appropriate level can learn to do. In principle, anyone of the appropriate strength/dedication/however you want to interpret levels in the setting could learn to do those things, not just people who can spend spell slots. So it's normal for that setting for people to be able to learn to teleport[1]. Even if it isn't for people on Earth.

[1] akin to FFXIV's implementation, where the aetherites are available to anyone, but it takes a certain personal strength to learn to use them. The WoL can only do it as trivially as because they're a walking aether bomb; it's hard on most people if they can do it at all. But almost anyone can, in principle, learn to use them. Even if they can barely use any other magic.

[Psyren]

And that is a large issue with how 5e works, yes. It contributes a lot to the martial-caster imbalance (as a principle, not Forcecage in general). Conan cannot work in D&D if the sorcerers he faces work by D&D mechanics and are double-digit level spellcasters (or an NPC approximation thereof).

Which brings us back to the point I stated earlier in the thread (granted, it was not @you): we either need to bring the casters down to earth so that having a lot of HP and damage means something beyond "ok I just outmaneuver it completely for a spellslot that's been cheap five levels ago", or bring martials and monsters back up, so that they actually have ways to play around the spellcasters' having such tools.

My personal favourite is meeting in the middle, letting everyone be fantastical in spades, and having monsters with cool abilities you can shut down or play around by using your own cool abilities as any class.

It's only an issue if you're expecting CR to map directly to difficulty at all times regardless of the capabilities of the monster and the party in question, and even other factors like the battlefield. That's essentially impossible for a game that's as open-ended as D&D, unless you boil down both NPC and PC capabilities to the (frankly two-dimensional) degree that 4e did, or else playtest every single monster and encounter to the nines like they're an MMO raid boss, which likely isn't even feasible for a published module.

Put another way - I'm fine with, say, an iron golem being CR 16 nominally but rather easy for a level 10 archer in a hot air balloon with a +1 bow to take care of. You can design and design and design every monster painstakingly to try and remove any kind of discrepancy like that - or you can provide guidelines to calculate CR in broad strokes, accept that some encounters are going to be easier or harder than their CR would indicate, and use the time you'd save to make more fun monsters. I know which one I'd go with every single time.

[Ignimortis]

I generally agree with "meet in the middle." That will require tuning down casters as well as accepting slightly wider "what can non-casters do" options.

One, utterly quixotic and probably unworkable idea I had was to imagine a world where magic only very rarely replaced things normal(ish) people could do and mostly augmented those abilities. Here I'm mostly talking about utility magic--raw bursts of fire are one thing. Trivially teleporting, etc is a different thing. Or, to take the bugbears--spiderclimb and knock, as well as the various charm abilities.

What if charm person just gave you proficiency in charisma checks, and if you already had proficiency, gave you expertise instead. That is, it makes you really charming, but doesn't actually remove the need for a check. What if knock gave you proficiency (or expertise if you had it) in thieves tools instead of just opening the lock? If spiderclimb gave you advantage on checks made to climb instead of just saying "ok, you can climb anywhere and anything". What if planeshift was instead find planar portal, and allowed anyone to find the nearest planar portal attuned to <plane>, and you gave rangers a native ability to do that? What if fly was really just jump real high and land safely? or walk on clouds (and anyone could do that with a sufficient check already)?

Again, I have a PF2 book to sell you for the first half of those. My issue with PF2 is that it aims too low and never actually gets to walking on clouds or finding planar portals with a skill check. Sadly, it's way too wrapped up in being a good tactical combat game that works at level 1 to ever consider that maybe level 10 shouldn't be subject to the same harsh limitations in the base rules, and that combat options that are fine at level 1 (Power Attack or just attack? sure, I guess) are not fun by level 10 (I am still stuck Power Attacking, there's nothing better to do). But the general principle applies - magic very rarely actually does things, especially things that are possible through a skill check. It's more likely to give you either a bonus to the check. The only exception I can remember right now is Spider Climb, which just gives you a climb speed (and still forces you to have free hands to climb, darnit).

That, and make a lot of the non-immediate utility magic (the things you're not casting because you need the result right now) available to everyone via something like (but implemented better) 4e's rituals. So teleport or sending or even raise dead isn't something you need to be a caster for--it's something that anyone of the appropriate level can learn to do. In principle, anyone of the appropriate strength/dedication/however you want to interpret levels in the setting could learn to do those things, not just people who can spend spell slots. So it's normal for that setting for people to be able to learn to teleport[1]. Even if it isn't for people on Earth.

[1] akin to FFXIV's implementation, where the aetherites are available to anyone, but it takes a certain personal strength to learn to use them. The WoL can only do it as trivially as because they're a walking aether bomb; it's hard on most people if they can do it at all. But almost anyone can, in principle, learn to use them. Even if they can barely use any other magic.

Yes. Sure. I'd rather run a lot of things how FFXIV does them. Multiple people are good enough to swing their axe so hard, it produces a shockwave. It's not magic, it's just how aether works, and aether is basically physics for XIV. Linkpearls are just Sending machines, and anyone of decent wealth (implied to be pretty high, since they're not distributed to every soldier or even every officer, but Scions have some, and all militaries have some, so they're not artifacts) can grab ahold of a few.

It's only an issue if you're expecting CR to map directly to difficulty at all times regardless of the capabilities of the monster and the party in question, and even other factors like the battlefield. That's essentially impossible for a game that's as open-ended as D&D, unless you boil down both NPC and PC capabilities to the (frankly two-dimensional) degree that 4e did, or else playtest every single monster and encounter to the nines like they're an MMO raid boss, which likely isn't even feasible for a published module.

Put another way - I'm fine with, say, an iron golem being CR 16 nominally but rather easy for a level 10 archer in a hot air balloon with a +1 bow to take care of. You can design and design and design every monster painstakingly to try and remove any kind of discrepancy like that - or you can provide guidelines to calculate CR in broad strokes, accept that some encounters are going to be easier or harder than their CR would indicate, and use the time you'd save to make more fun monsters. I know which one I'd go with every single time.

I would consider that an issue, because if a CR16 monster cannot counter a level 5 tactic, that's an issue - both in monster design and in player ability design. Maybe flight shouldn't be so easy. Maybe crowd control shouldn't be so easy (again, PF2 does that well enough). Maybe a CR16 monster should at least have a pre-written ranged attack (just give the golem laser eyes, dangit) in case it's stuck outside of melee. It might not be a GOOD ranged attack for its' level, but it will counter people trying to cheese it while being severely below it in level.

[awa]

No True ScotsDemon, got it.

Unless there are official D&D stats for any of these villains, you can't definitively conclude that e.g. CR 8 is the only way to translate them. (Or rather, you can, and I'll disagree.)

I like conan and think he should be what barbarians/fighters should be aimed at but as a general statement conans foes have nowhere near the versatility of powerful d&d demons. They often have very powerful abilities off screen like resurrecting a city, but are pretty straight forward when comes to actual fighting with only one or two gimmicks. (the demon sor was functional an iron golem in a fight)

Compared to powerful d&d monster who use spells it would be very reasonable to place them at relatively low cr. I mean you could make them high Cr just by giving them big numbers but that just leaves you with the problem of the trasque and mountain giant monster with big number that are fairly easy to beat if you can get around their defenses.

Of course the big difference between conan and a Pc is first hes typically either by himself or with low power extras, and while he gets magic items he rarely keeps them.

Edit
personally I'm fine with some enemies that are more puzzle than traditional foe a threat that is dangerous unless you can figure out its weakness. I dont use xp so the fact that they can trivialize some enemies with the right resources is fine i just plan for it. I dont like force cage because its not smart its just an I win button for too many things.

[Psyren]

I would consider that an issue, because if a CR16 monster cannot counter a level 5 tactic, that's an issue - both in monster design and in player ability design. Maybe flight shouldn't be so easy. Maybe crowd control shouldn't be so easy (again, PF2 does that well enough). Maybe a CR16 monster should at least have a pre-written ranged attack (just give the golem laser eyes, dangit) in case it's stuck outside of melee. It might not be a GOOD ranged attack for its' level, but it will counter people trying to cheese it while being severely below it in level.

1) You don't need "flight" to get somewhere a golem can't reach you. A rooftop, a tree, across a chasm, an arrowslit etc all work too.

2) I'll take your word for it that PF2 magically solved this "problem" across the board, as I have no intention or desire to play it for the foreseeable future.

3) The golem can, if ordered to, make improvised thrown attacks like anything else with arms and a strength score. A monster's statblock is not an exhaustive list of every physical capability it possesses, so there's your bad ranged attack if you feel it's needed. It's still not going to be a CR 16 attack, and that's okay.

[Batcathat]

I would consider that an issue, because if a CR16 monster cannot counter a level 5 tactic, that's an issue - both in monster design and in player ability design. Maybe flight shouldn't be so easy. Maybe crowd control shouldn't be so easy (again, PF2 does that well enough). Maybe a CR16 monster should at least have a pre-written ranged attack (just give the golem laser eyes, dangit) in case it's stuck outside of melee. It might not be a GOOD ranged attack for its' level, but it will counter people trying to cheese it while being severely below it in level.

While making some things less easy for casters is probably a good idea in general, I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with creatures/characters having glaring Achilles' heels to be exploited, it's certainly common enough in both reality and fiction (not to mention my personal soft spot for heroes who out-think their enemies instead of out-fighting them). Of course, to keep things balanced it should ideally be very varied weaknesses, which I don't think is the case a lot of the time.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Personally, I don't think that I've ever seen an Iron Golem in an area where it can be kited/sniped like that. Hard to fly out of its reach in its native environment (aka indoors). Very few tree branches there or places out of its reach to climb to.

Which points out something important--monsters cannot be judged in a vacuum. Nor can abilities. White-room thinking (especially that that assumes the most favorable state for the PCs, but only sometimes[1]) distorts things and makes holes appear where they don't necessarily exist in actual play.

[1] I've seen this a lot, and especially when it favors casters. Who always seem to have the right spells/right build + know exactly the weaknesses of their enemy and start in favorable positions and win initiative. Martials, especially melee ones, for some reason, tend to start these scenarios out of position (aka far away), unprepared, etc. Hmm....

[Psyren]

Personally, I don't think that I've ever seen an Iron Golem in an area where it can be kited/sniped like that. Hard to fly out of its reach in its native environment (aka indoors). Very few tree branches there or places out of its reach to climb to.

Which points out something important--monsters cannot be judged in a vacuum. Nor can abilities. White-room thinking (especially that that assumes the most favorable state for the PCs, but only sometimes[1]) distorts things and makes holes appear where they don't necessarily exist in actual play.

[1] I've seen this a lot, and especially when it favors casters. Who always seem to have the right spells/right build + know exactly the weaknesses of their enemy and start in favorable positions and win initiative. Martials, especially melee ones, for some reason, tend to start these scenarios out of position (aka far away), unprepared, etc. Hmm....

The Iron Golem was largely a counterexample to show that melee-only bruisers don't have to be low CR, but anyway -

Even if there aren't natural obstacles in a melee creature's path, by the time CR 16 rolls around a lot of parties can make their own. Transmute Rock to Mud for example - even if the Golem succeeds on its save, its speed is still cut by 3/4 which likely gives the party's ranged attackers multiple rounds to bombard it. And if it gets unlucky and fails any of those saves, it loses an entire round of movement for even more impunity, on top of giving all of its attackers advantage.

[PhoenixPhyre]

The Iron Golem was largely a counterexample to show that melee-only bruisers don't have to be low CR, but anyway -

Even if there aren't natural obstacles in a melee creature's path, by the time CR 16 rolls around a lot of parties can make their own. Transmute Rock to Mud for example - even if the Golem succeeds on its save, its speed is still cut by 3/4 which likely gives the party's ranged attackers multiple rounds to bombard it. And if it gets unlucky and fails any of those saves, it loses an entire round of movement for even more impunity, on top of giving all of its attackers advantage.

True. But still, that assumes you have enough room to maneuver (aka large rooms) as well as nice solid (aka not worked) stone flooring Both of which are possible, but not guaranteed. And the more real-play the scenario, the more resources it takes to get into that bad state AND the less likely it is to meet all the necessary criteria. Which makes the gap closer than it appears in white-room analysis.

As another example, dragons. Conventional wisdom is that they should never land. But if they never land...they can't defend their lair very well. For much the same reason that mere air bombardment doesn't really hold ground very well. As soon as you start adding in conditions other than "completely empty white, featureless, infinitely-sized plane and no win conditions other than killing each other", a lot of the conventional wisdom starts looking more shaky and the gap looks closer. Not zero, probably not even close enough. But closer.

[Dr.Samurai]

The Iron Golem was largely a counterexample to show that melee-only bruisers don't have to be low CR, but anyway -

Even if there aren't natural obstacles in a melee creature's path, by the time CR 16 rolls around a lot of parties can make their own. Transmute Rock to Mud for example - even if the Golem succeeds on its save, its speed is still cut by 3/4 which likely gives the party's ranged attackers multiple rounds to bombard it. And if it gets unlucky and fails any of those saves, it loses an entire round of movement for even more impunity, on top of giving all of its attackers advantage.

Which calls to mind something else martials do which is ignored in games; traps. I know 5E included "make traps" with Tasha's, or Xanathar's. And I know 3.5 has the prestige class in Dungeonscape.

But I mean a full fledged system that a DM can tack on if they want to provide those options to their players.

This will probably be labeled too complex so we just need to use the simple and streamlined magic system instead...

[KorvinStarmast]

Which calls to mind something else martials do which is ignored in games; traps. I know 5E included "make traps" with Tasha's, or Xanathar's. And I know 3.5 has the prestige class in Dungeonscape.

But I mean a full fledged system that a DM can tack on if they want to provide those options to their players.

This will probably be labeled too complex so we just need to use the simple and streamlined magic system instead...

Trap spells: Witch Bolt in D&D 5e.
or
Glyph of Warding, which can be used to trigger certain magical effects so it's kind of like a magical trap.

[Psyren]

True. But still, that assumes you have enough room to maneuver (aka large rooms) as well as nice solid (aka not worked) stone flooring Both of which are possible, but not guaranteed. And the more real-play the scenario, the more resources it takes to get into that bad state AND the less likely it is to meet all the necessary criteria. Which makes the gap closer than it appears in white-room analysis.

As another example, dragons. Conventional wisdom is that they should never land. But if they never land...they can't defend their lair very well. For much the same reason that mere air bombardment doesn't really hold ground very well. As soon as you start adding in conditions other than "completely empty white, featureless, infinitely-sized plane and no win conditions other than killing each other", a lot of the conventional wisdom starts looking more shaky and the gap looks closer. Not zero, probably not even close enough. But closer.

Sure, I'm against pure white room theorycrafting and featureless voids too. But I don't think battlefield conditions like "archer-friendly room" and "stone floor" are exactly rare either.

Which calls to mind something else martials do which is ignored in games; traps. I know 5E included "make traps" with Tasha's, or Xanathar's. And I know 3.5 has the prestige class in Dungeonscape.

But I mean a full fledged system that a DM can tack on if they want to provide those options to their players.

This will probably be labeled too complex so we just need to use the simple and streamlined magic system instead...

Traps are largely impractical, not because the rules for them are anemic, but because the party are usually the invaders in this game and so their opportunity to prepare the battlefield ahead of time tends to be limited. A defense encounter where the party can rig the place up like a Kobold Kevin McAllister would certainly be an interesting change of pace, but it would probably be pretty seldom. The "Dungeons" part refers to where you're going usually, not your base.

[Pex]

That's the two-step I mentioned. Argue one thing, then when questioned say "no, I really meant something completely different and more defensible". In addition, all the talk about comparing to actual Aragorn and actual Balrogs only has meaning if you literally mean literal Aragorn in D&D. And that was my point. That it didn't have meaning, because you can't do literal Aragorn.

No that is not happening at all. That's just you claiming that is what we mean. When I played my barbarian the DM asked me what personal goal I wanted. I told him I wanted him to be like Hercules, recognized and praised as the strongest man in the world, eventually of course. I did my part in building the character as the levels progressed. Bear totem at 3rd and 6th level. 20 ST. In multiclassing rogue took expertise in Athletics and Acrobatics. DM did his part. There would be big bruiser opponents for me to fight. Another player helped. He was playing a bard but not happy with his character. When he switched characters he gave me a parting present of writing a song about me slaying a dragon, which happened in game. The DM made the song canon to the game, helping me earn a reputation and fandom that grew when I slew more dragons. I became Champion of the Kingsmoot, an arena battle finale of a weeklong celebration. Even though it was our party vs an NPC party, I was the leader and figurehead. (Party was accepting. They had their own Things at the Kingsmoot.) By the time I put on an exhibition to fight a tyrannosaur in single combat people were already cheering my name. What did not happen? I did not murder a wife and son in drunken rage. I did not have to do 12 labors of impossible tasks. I did not have a deity as a father. I did not have to clean stables or carry the sky, though I did kill a Hydra-Dragon in the River Styx meant to be Scylla of Greek legend. I was Hercules, but I wasn't and never meant to be Hercules.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Sure, I'm against pure white room theorycrafting and featureless voids too. But I don't think battlefield conditions like "archer-friendly room" and "stone floor" are exactly rare either.

But often not together. It also makes those saves at advantage, and they're STR saves (which it has a +7 to). And it's still moving 15'/round, so you need a room that's something like 30+' long, with the golem at the far end to start. And you need to have Transmute Rock prepared, which I've never seen. Heck, I've never seen a PC who had it known (other than one druid who had it by default). Again, yes, it is a weakness. But the gap is smaller than it appears.

And there are certainly some quirks of 5e that make ranged combat too easy (sharpshooter, looking at you).

But what I'm most annoyed by is the one-sided nature of these hypotheticals. They're so often designed to showcase one group (usually the casters') effectiveness and another (usually the martial's) weakness. The casters always have the right spells prepared. The favored side is never surprised or in unfavorable positions (like figuring out it's a golem when it's right on top of you, or having groups of melee mobs flanking you through the other entrances. But the martials always start out of position, usually having to draw a weapon, and never have a nice counter (like a Dragon-slaying sword for a dragon fight or boots of flight, etc). It's so often "ideal for one, crappy for the other". Which is a major thumb to put on the scales.

Traps are largely impractical, not because the rules for them are anemic, but because the party are usually the invaders in this game and so their opportunity to prepare the battlefield ahead of time tends to be limited. A defense encounter where the party can rig the place up like a Kobold Kevin McAllister would certainly be an interesting change of pace, but it would probably be pretty seldom. The "Dungeons" part refers to where you're going usually, not your base.

Agree with this, however. Traps also take a long time to set up. And fall afoul of the same "realism" complaints--an Iron Golem is just going to walk through anything mundane you can do as far as a trap, especially since you don't have weeks to tunnel out the dungeon corridor so it can fall.

[Pex]

Personally, I don't think that I've ever seen an Iron Golem in an area where it can be kited/sniped like that. Hard to fly out of its reach in its native environment (aka indoors). Very few tree branches there or places out of its reach to climb to.

Which points out something important--monsters cannot be judged in a vacuum. Nor can abilities. White-room thinking (especially that that assumes the most favorable state for the PCs, but only sometimes[1]) distorts things and makes holes appear where they don't necessarily exist in actual play.

[1] I've seen this a lot, and especially when it favors casters. Who always seem to have the right spells/right build + know exactly the weaknesses of their enemy and start in favorable positions and win initiative. Martials, especially melee ones, for some reason, tend to start these scenarios out of position (aka far away), unprepared, etc. Hmm....

My barbarian grappled and pinned an iron golem to the ground and just let the rogue swashbuckler sneak attack it to death. It took a few of rounds, but it essentially enabled the other party members, including spellcasters, to do the needed things to do to get us out of the trap room we were in where the only exit was blocked by a prismatic wall. I didn't have to kill the iron golem to contribute meaningfully in that encounter. It was a team effort to get out of that room, as it should be.

[Dr.Samurai]

A lot of these conversations actually assume not-dungeon environments. Case in point with PhoenixPhyre having to remind us that sometimes you're fighting a dragon, you know, in it's actual lair, or maybe you can't just avoid the iron golem but have to engage it in melee.

We assume plenty of prep time for casters, whether it's setting up buff spells, crafting potions or other magic items, getting their summons up. I see no reason that part of the prep for an encounter can't be preparing a kill field with a trap and luring or baiting the creature into that trap. I'm fully aware that this isn't normal D&D, but a quest to take down a roving monsters can certainly take this form (not to mention I'd raise a point or two about what does and doesn't look like D&D based on other comments in this thread).

[PhoenixPhyre]

My barbarian grappled and pinned an iron golem to the ground and just let the rogue swashbuckler sneak attack it to death. It took a few of rounds, but it essentially enabled the other party members, including spellcasters, to do the needed things to do to get us out of the trap room we were in where the only exit was blocked by a prismatic wall. I didn't have to kill the iron golem to contribute meaningfully in that encounter. It was a team effort to get out of that room, as it should be.

Exactly. Real scenarios are full of such things that don't quite accord to the "optimized" theorycrafted models.

A lot of these conversations actually assume not-dungeon environments. Case in point with PhoenixPhyre having to remind us that sometimes you're fighting a dragon, you know, in it's actual lair, or maybe you can't just avoid the iron golem but have to engage it in melee.

We assume plenty of prep time for casters, whether it's setting up buff spells, crafting potions or other magic items, getting their summons up. I see no reason that part of the prep for an encounter can't be preparing a kill field with a trap and luring or baiting the creature into that trap. I'm fully aware that this isn't normal D&D, but a quest to take down a roving monsters can certainly take this form (not to mention I'd raise a point or two about what does and doesn't look like D&D based on other comments in this thread).

For tracking down wandering monsters (ie hunting stuff), traps work great. I'm not sure they need to be class features (because they're only applicable a small fraction of the time), but having class features that, as a side effect of other things, enhance ones ability to set traps would be great.

Something like
1) setting a trap involves a Wisdom (Survival) check with degrees of success governing how effective it is (whether that's part of finding the right placement, the right bait, or whatever)
2) Rangers (theoretically) get a feature that gives them expertise when making Wisdom (Survival) checks involving tracking creatures/etc.
==> Anyone can set a trap, but rangers are better at it.

Generally, I'd like to see a lot more spells that enhance things people can already do, not replace them. Stuff where buffing the martial is the best plan, because he is already positioned to make most use of it. Stuff that makes caster + martial stronger than caster + caster or martial + martial.

[Mechalich]

A lot of these conversations actually assume not-dungeon environments. Case in point with PhoenixPhyre having to remind us that sometimes you're fighting a dragon, you know, in it's actual lair, or maybe you can't just avoid the iron golem but have to engage it in melee.

We assume plenty of prep time for casters, whether it's setting up buff spells, crafting potions or other magic items, getting their summons up. I see no reason that part of the prep for an encounter can't be preparing a kill field with a trap and luring or baiting the creature into that trap. I'm fully aware that this isn't normal D&D, but a quest to take down a roving monsters can certainly take this form (not to mention I'd raise a point or two about what does and doesn't look like D&D based on other comments in this thread).

One of the reasons that casters often receive favorable assumptions is that casters have abilities to engineer favorable encounters and, perhaps more importantly, to avoid unfavorable ones. Casters have any number of abilities to escape from an encounter on their very first action (sometimes, via things like contingency, before they take any action), if they deem the situation unfavorable. If you're holding a teleport, why would you ever engage in an unfavorable encounter? Above a very low-level threshold a caster never has to 'fight their way out' of a bad situation unless the foe has devoted special resources to rendering escape magic non-viable. Martials, by contrast, generally have no ability to escape beyond physically running, and as level increases even that tends to go away since almost all high-level monsters either possess magical movement modes or are just faster than the martials (often both).

For this reason, a DM mandating a 'classic dungeon crawl' format does a considerable amount to increase game balance simply by forcing the game into a literal box. This is something all D&D video games do, and it absolutely does mitigate their balance issues to a degree (they also tend to pump the encounter rate so that 'all day' abilities become more valuable, but actual live tabletop can't really do that).

[PhoenixPhyre]

If you're holding a teleport, why would you ever engage in an unfavorable encounter?

Because you can't get back to where you are that easily? Sure, you can bail...but then you've failed the mission you were on. You have to go back overland to get back. And that takes time. Or because you're not the only one there? There's a team, right? And you're not all in arms length 100% of the time, right? And if the iron golem is in a small, trapped room that you have to get through to get where you're going...teleporting out doesn't help. And the same goes for other types of escape magic. Escaping doesn't reset things--it's not a free "try again". It's failure.

Especially in 5e, where teleport always has a chance of failure unless you're porting to a permanent teleport circle.

It's these kinds of assumptions (that casters can usually or always engineer things to their liking and that martials can rarely, if ever do so) that I dislike. Because they're just-so stories--made up almost entirely to "prove" one side better.

Are martials and casters balanced (in 5e)? No. But this kind of white-room, Schrodinger's caster scenario isn't true to actual play either.

[KorvinStarmast]

I see no reason that part of the prep for an encounter can't be preparing a kill field with a trap and luring or baiting the creature into that trap. I'm fully aware that this isn't normal D&D, but a quest to take down a roving monsters can certainly take this form (not to mention I'd raise a point or two about what does and doesn't look like D&D based on other comments in this thread).

We did that all the time in old school games.

Exactly. Real scenarios are full of such things that don't quite accord to the "optimized" theorycrafted models.

Classic example is the tactical lack of acumen of a bladelock and a paladin who, when we'd set up the ambush for the adult dragon, the Oni, and the Giant (and a few notable NPCs') didn't wait for my prismatic spray to hit them first, the just leaped into the fray because "uh, initiative, I can't wait" -

Spoiler: That's the seed of the argument

Show

The fact that they had obviously not learned from this mistake some months later led to me getting exasperated. We worked it out, sort of.

1) setting a trap involves a Wisdom (Survival) check with degrees of success governing how effective it is (whether that's part of finding the right placement, the right bait, or whatever)
2) Rangers (theoretically) get a feature that gives them expertise when making Wisdom (Survival) checks involving tracking creatures/etc.
==> Anyone can set a trap, but rangers are better at it.

Interesting idea, if I ever get a group with a Ranger I may explore this.

Generally, I'd like to see a lot more spells that enhance things people can already do, not replace them. Stuff where buffing the martial is the best plan, because he is already positioned to make most use of it. Stuff that makes caster + martial stronger than caster + caster or martial + martial.

That's been my approach / schtick with clerics, and a bard, and a sorcerer, since about 2014. Heck, my paladin is kinda put together that way. It's an option one can take in this edition (5e) already.

[PhoenixPhyre]

We did that all the time in old school games.
Classic example is the tactical lack of acumen of a bladelock and a paladin who, when we'd set up the ambush for the adult dragon, the Oni, and the Giant (and a few notable NPCs') didn't wait for my prismatic spray to hit them first, the just leaped into the fray because "uh, initiative, I can't wait" -

Spoiler: That's the seed of the argument

Show

The fact that they had obviously not learned from this mistake some months later led to me getting exasperated. We worked it out, sort of.

Interesting idea, if I ever get a group with a Ranger I may explore this.

That's been my approach / schtick with clerics, and a bard, and a sorcerer, since about 2014. Heck, my paladin is kinda put together that way. It's an option one can take in this edition (5e) already.

I'm not sure what you mean. That bladelock was never prone to jumping in over his head into the thick of things without thinking. NEVER! And the paladin had his (estranged) wife and his twin brother to murder. Of course they couldn't wait

[Dr.Samurai]

Trap spells: Witch Bolt in D&D 5e.
or
Glyph of Warding, which can be used to trigger certain magical effects so it's kind of like a magical trap.

I forgot to mention this made me chuckle .

For tracking down wandering monsters (ie hunting stuff), traps work great. I'm not sure they need to be class features (because they're only applicable a small fraction of the time), but having class features that, as a side effect of other things, enhance ones ability to set traps would be great.

Something like
1) setting a trap involves a Wisdom (Survival) check with degrees of success governing how effective it is (whether that's part of finding the right placement, the right bait, or whatever)
2) Rangers (theoretically) get a feature that gives them expertise when making Wisdom (Survival) checks involving tracking creatures/etc.
==> Anyone can set a trap, but rangers are better at it.

Agreed, it shouldn't be a class feature, but work off existing stuff. As I mentioned previously, the game gives martials precious little to engage with that isn't pure DM fiat. A traps system that can be implemented would be cool for the times when it makes sense to implement.

Generally, I'd like to see a lot more spells that enhance things people can already do, not replace them. Stuff where buffing the martial is the best plan, because he is already positioned to make most use of it. Stuff that makes caster + martial stronger than caster + caster or martial + martial.

I was going to direct you to PhoenixPhyre's post but then I realized this was you lol.

I think this is a good idea. I suspect though that it isn't what the casters are looking for. It feels less like magic and more like downloading information from the Matrix. I'm not a caster guy, so I don't know, but my gut tells me they wouldn't like the feel of this change.

One of the reasons that casters often receive favorable assumptions is that casters have abilities to engineer favorable encounters and, perhaps more importantly, to avoid unfavorable ones. Casters have any number of abilities to escape from an encounter on their very first action (sometimes, via things like contingency, before they take any action), if they deem the situation unfavorable. If you're holding a teleport, why would you ever engage in an unfavorable encounter? Above a very low-level threshold a caster never has to 'fight their way out' of a bad situation unless the foe has devoted special resources to rendering escape magic non-viable. Martials, by contrast, generally have no ability to escape beyond physically running, and as level increases even that tends to go away since almost all high-level monsters either possess magical movement modes or are just faster than the martials (often both).

For this reason, a DM mandating a 'classic dungeon crawl' format does a considerable amount to increase game balance simply by forcing the game into a literal box. This is something all D&D video games do, and it absolutely does mitigate their balance issues to a degree (they also tend to pump the encounter rate so that 'all day' abilities become more valuable, but actual live tabletop can't really do that).

I understand the point you are making, but I don't think that's where the favorable assumptions come from. I think there's a large online meta that has grown from the sort of optimized way to deal with encounters, and this almost always hinges on casters throwing down certain spells at the beginning of the combat, with other spells in reserve as needed. Because spells are so powerful and versatile, this makes sense. But it means that conversations begin from a premise of "how would this work for a caster?" and don't always (probably mostly never) reflect a lot of actual tabletop play.

As discussed in another thread, it's a given for some people that a dragon would never land. It begs the question why 90% of it's firepower is melee attacks, or why they come with lair actions if they're not going to be in their lairs. Well, if the dragon is in the air, most martials are severely handicapped against it. Casters want it in the air because it can't use it's multi-attack on them and they can still reach it with spells as it circles around waiting for its breath weapon to recharge.

It's these kinds of assumptions (that casters can usually or always engineer things to their liking and that martials can rarely, if ever do so) that I dislike. Because they're just-so stories--made up almost entirely to "prove" one side better.

The interesting thing to me is that the game is like a story, with characters and quests and NPCs and villains, etc. Anything the DM can do to "prove" one side is better, it can do for the other. As I've said before, I haven't really run into an issue where the casters are outclassing everyone, and so I don't have these concerns about wizards being more powerful than my barbarian. I don't like them encroaching on martials by gaining their abilities, but that's more of a principle thing. But I think a lot of these balance concerns can be addressed at the table. I DO think martials should be given more to do, but if a player is outshining everyone all the time, sounds like something the DM and that player can address.

We use Avengers as an example all the time in these threads, and the writers there made everyone necessary in those movies in order to succeed. The DM can have that responsibility too.

[Pex]

Exactly. Real scenarios are full of such things that don't quite accord to the "optimized" theorycrafted models.



For tracking down wandering monsters (ie hunting stuff), traps work great. I'm not sure they need to be class features (because they're only applicable a small fraction of the time), but having class features that, as a side effect of other things, enhance ones ability to set traps would be great.

Something like
1) setting a trap involves a Wisdom (Survival) check with degrees of success governing how effective it is (whether that's part of finding the right placement, the right bait, or whatever)
2) Rangers (theoretically) get a feature that gives them expertise when making Wisdom (Survival) checks involving tracking creatures/etc.
==> Anyone can set a trap, but rangers are better at it.

Generally, I'd like to see a lot more spells that enhance things people can already do, not replace them. Stuff where buffing the martial is the best plan, because he is already positioned to make most use of it. Stuff that makes caster + martial stronger than caster + caster or martial + martial.

Careful. It was a major resentment in 3E for spellcasters to buff the fighter. Way back when in Ye Olde WTOC Forums people had conniption fits over it. They demanded and got proof a fighter deserved a buff. They made a thread of arena fighting where a fighter had to battle a succession of monsters at each level. It was accepted the fighter didn't have to win any combat, only show it put up a good enough fight that a buff was worth it to help the fighter defeat the monster. Everyone who placed a fighter won almost every fight. There was a sequel thread where using the same fighter at the same build each level had to face multiple opponents in a battle. The fighters didn't win as often but won enough and almost won the rest. Still, some people keep resenting buffing the fighter when they could just cast another spell that solves the problem.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Careful. It was a major resentment in 3E for spellcasters to buff the fighter. Way back when in Ye Olde WTOC Forums people had conniption fits over it. They demanded and got proof a fighter deserved a buff. They made a thread of arena fighting where a fighter had to battle a succession of monsters at each level. It was accepted the fighter didn't have to win any combat, only show it put up a good enough fight that a buff was worth it to help the fighter defeat the monster. Everyone who placed a fighter won almost every fight. There was a sequel thread where using the same fighter at the same build each level had to face multiple opponents in a battle. The fighters didn't win as often but won enough and almost won the rest. Still, some people keep resenting buffing the fighter when they could just cast another spell that solves the problem.

Yeah. I (jokingly) think it has to do with nerds wanting revenge on jocks, and most D&D players (especially those who got heavily into 3e) being nerds. Wizards ruling is a nerd power fantasy. But I'm not 100% serious about that.

[KorvinStarmast]

Yeah. I (jokingly) think it has to do with nerds wanting revenge on jocks, and most D&D players (especially those who got heavily into 3e) being nerds. Wizards ruling is a nerd power fantasy. But I'm not 100% serious about that.

But you are probably right. Wizards ruling is a nerd power fantasy. Or a matter of wish fulfillment. But you may want to narrow that focus on nerds who design these kinds of games.
Jocks play these games too. Most of the guys I played D&D with in high school and college were also jocks, but not all were.

(There was a neat news item last year, think I picked it up on Twitcher, about an NFL player who recruited a bunch of his team mates into playing in his D&D group).

[PhoenixPhyre]

But you are probably right. Wizards ruling is a nerd power fantasy. Or a matter of wish fulfillment. But you may want to narrow that focus on nerds who design these kinds of games.
Jocks play these games too. Most of the guys I played D&D with in high school and college were also jocks, but not all were.

(There was a neat news item last year, think I picked it up on Twitcher, about an NFL player who recruited a bunch of his team mates into playing in his D&D group).

For better or worse, the demographic of players substantially changed with 5e. But there's a lot of truth to the pre-5e stereotype. And especially those nerdy enough to post on forums about it. Those who took it (gulp) seriously.

But yes, there always were non-nerds playing. And the overlap of jock and nerd =/= 0.

[KorvinStarmast]

But yes, there always were non-nerds playing. And the overlap of jock and nerd =/= 0.

You talk to one most Saturday nights.

[Mechalich]

Careful. It was a major resentment in 3E for spellcasters to buff the fighter. Way back when in Ye Olde WTOC Forums people had conniption fits over it. They demanded and got proof a fighter deserved a buff. They made a thread of arena fighting where a fighter had to battle a succession of monsters at each level. It was accepted the fighter didn't have to win any combat, only show it put up a good enough fight that a buff was worth it to help the fighter defeat the monster. Everyone who placed a fighter won almost every fight. There was a sequel thread where using the same fighter at the same build each level had to face multiple opponents in a battle. The fighters didn't win as often but won enough and almost won the rest. Still, some people keep resenting buffing the fighter when they could just cast another spell that solves the problem.

Buffing is one of those things that's mechanically tricky to get right, and tabletop has some biases that fight against it. Notably, tabletop is biased toward combats that are short, while buffs are most mechanically viable in combats that are long (this applies to in-combat healing as well, which can be regarded as a sort of specialized buff). 3.X D&D, especially was really, really biased towards combats that were fundamentally decided in a single action: ie. drop a SoS on the opponent(s) and the rest is cleanup, because of the design error of HP bloat. Most buffs, especially buffs directed at martials, involved increasing DPR in some fashion, which simply wasn't an efficient means to achieve high-level D&D objectives. So while buffing the fighter was certainly viable, it was often far from the best move available.

Getting buffing right, especially in-combat buffing, requires a lot of math hammering. D&D's multiple-combat resource depletion paradigm makes this doubly complicated compared to a game with compartmentalized combat states like most video games where buffs are directly integrated into the action economy.